Designing Zim’s start-up ecosystem
Continuing with the quest to design the Zimbabwe’s start-up ecosystem, the last two articles have been about policy and finance design.
THIS article will go into detail about culture design. Culture encompasses the social behaviour, the institutions, norms found in human societies as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of the individuals in these groups.
A start-up culture covers societal norms and success stories that help to inspire people to become entrepreneurs. It can be argued that building cultural support is required for an enterprise to establish a start-up ecosystem.
The tolerance of risk and failure within an enterprise, priority given to self-employment, innovation celebration, success stories, research cultures and role models are the aspects that are always of huge importance in cultural support.
Designing the culture for start-ups requires them to be inspired by success stories which are celebrated and an environment which celebrates innovation by awarding it.
This article will discuss the following; start-up culture design questions; steps to creating a culture of innovation; establishing an institutional framework for embedding a start-up culture; and fostering a start-up culture. The terms start-up and innovation are used interchangeably as start-ups operate in an innovative environment.
Start-up culture design questions
Before designing an innovation culture, there are a number of questions to ask, that can help in then coming up with the appropriate design elements for the desired culture. The following questions can be asked; what are the norms, values, behaviours and attitudes that encourage start-ups and innovation? How do we inculcate them in our national culture?
What types of institutions are required for start-ups and innovation to thrive at a national level? What laws do we have that encourage start-ups? What laws do we need to put in place for start-ups and innovation to thrive? What capabilities do we need to have for innovation to thrive? Do we have those capabilities? How do we develop the capabilities?
Do our business regulatory institutions encourage or hinder start-up development? What type of standard setting institutions do we have? Do they encourage or hinder start-up development? Do the licenses developed by local authorities and industry regulators encourage or hinder start-up development?
How do we set up business regulations, standards and licenses that encourage start-up development? Is our institutional framework connected to each others so as to promote innovation? How do we connect the institutions to each other? Do our regulatory institutions complement each other for start-up development or they hinder start-up development?
Do we have knowledge creation institutions that focus on start-ups and innovation? Are these institutions adequate at a national level?
Do we have knowledge transfer institutions for start-ups? If not how do we develop the knowledge transfer institutions? Do we have knowledge sharing institutions for start-up development? If not, how do we develop the knowledge sharing institutions?
Steps to creating a culture of
innovation
Building a culture of innovation is easier said than done. It requires a clear vision, a supportive leadership style, and a structured approach to cultivate innovation within the organisation.
As a nation what is our innovation strategy? Are we developing innovations from scratch or we are going to acquire innovations developed by others, but just transfer knowledge to our context? Looking at our resource base, we have a lot of minerals but do not have the knowledge for transforming the minerals into finished products.
The same can be said for our agricultural produce. A lot of it goes into waste instead of it being processed. Our starting point can be making sure we get knowledge transfer for processing all the resources that we have.
Define and Communicate a Clear Innovation Strategy
As a nation, what innovation strategy is appropriate for us? Let us delve into our history a bit. Our country is endowed with resources both mineral and agricultural land and tourism potential. The major reason for colonisation was these resources.
The coloniser just wanted the country to be a source of raw materials. They made sure that mining and agricultural activities were carried out but did not create industries for processing. So if we want to correct this history, we need to develop our contextual definition of innovation as developing the capability to process all the resources that are found in our nation, to make them to be finished products for the world.
This will then make us to focus on getting the knowledge to do these things.
Empower employees to generate
and pursue new ideas
What does empower mean? How do we empower national citizens to generate and pursue innovations? There are five dimensions of empowerment. These are skill, purpose, autonomy, community and engagement. An empowered person has a skill.
This means that the person understands the role he/she is performing. The person also has access to professional development, with the latitude to try out new approaches and fail within specified parameters.
On autonomy there is a trusting management, individuals can make choices on how to perform their jobs, they are included in decision making and they can challenge the status quo, without being victimised.
There is a sense of community in terms of the authentic interactions that exist, there is cross-functional and multilevel collaborations and community inclusion. There is also active engagement in terms of knowledge sharing and commitment in the activities undertaken. So there is need to ensure that we create a national environment that empowers national citizens to generate and pursue new ideas.
Remove unnecessary
bureaucracy
One way of removing unnecessary bureaucracy is by implementing a flatter hierarchy. Flatter hierarchies reduce layers of management to create a more agile and responsive organisation.
This can be achieved by eliminating unnecessary levels of management, empowering teams to make decisions, and fostering a culture of collaboration and teamwork. There is need to create processes and procedures that get results achieved in a timely manner.
Let information flow freely
Transparency is necessary for fostering a culture of innovation. In addition to knowing the top priorities, transparency also breeds trust. Trust, in turn, breeds both engagement and personal connections.
Taken together, they encourage creative thinking and the confidence to share those ideas and work with teammates to bring them to life. So there must be a mechanism for ensuring that information flows to where it is required in a time for decisions to be taken.
Encourage cross-functional
collaboration
Innovation often requires collaboration across teams, units, and divisions within an organisation. Cross-functional collaboration can bring together diverse perspectives and expertise to drive innovation and find creative solutions to complex problems.
Celebrate innovation successes
As a country, we already have Heroes Day to commemorate our heroes. Historically, we have been celebrating only those who fought the liberation struggle and efforts have started to celebrate others in different areas.
Why not celebrate more, those who are living than the dead. While we celebrate those who liberation heroes’ sacrifices, for us to be where we are as a country today, let us include awards for innovation success and it becomes a National Heroes Innovation Week, where start-ups in various fields are celebrated.
This National Week becomes a week of events, networking conferences, highlighting start-up issues that need to be addressed including the awards.
Establishing an institutional framework for embedding a
start-up culture
Start-up innovation ecosystems are the regional or national structure in which startups, SMEs, large sized enterprises, universities and public organisations interact on a technological, social, legal and commercial basis in order to produce knowledge, develop new technologies and new business opportunities.
These interactions aim at developing and protecting new technologies and financing and regulating new projects. So there is need to develop at national and provincial level an institutional framework where these institutions interact to produce knowledge, develop new technologies and start businesses.
The key actors and stakeholders of a start-up ecosystem include support organisations, corporates, the community, funding organisations, Government institutions, educational institutions and research institutions. There is need to develop an institutional framework that connects all these actors together by developing activities that ensure all the stakeholders are involved.
Business regulatory institutions should make it easy to register and run a Start-up company. So there is need to simplify business registration procedures, make tax regulations affordable, accessible and user friendly.
Other institutions such as Intellectual Property Rights, investment agencies and procurement regulations may need harmonisation to make them accessible at one instance. There may be need to create a process which harmonises all the activities for a start-up, such as assessing all the standard setting institutions with a view to harmonise them and make them user friendly for the start-ups, for example the environmental, technical, occupational safety and health standards to create one institution.
Civil society organisations, education institutions, financial institutions and corporations have to be involved. Civil society organisations can assist in carrying out awareness workshops, and conferences. They can have innovation fair/exhibition.
The media can also be involved by having special sessions on innovation and broadcasting them on television, radio, social media where they look for innovators and highlight what they are doing.
More programmes on innovation need to be introduced by educational institutions.
The following courses can be introduced; New Venture Creation, Design Thinking, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, Strategic Innovation, Innovation Portfolio Optimisation, Innovation Process, Innovation Culture, Innovation Infrastructure, Business Model Innovation and Innovation Assessment.
In the academia there need to be more training courses on intellectual property rights and technology transfer. More awareness conferences and workshops need to be conducted. There should be support for commercialisation of public research results and industry linkages with the academia.
New teaching practices need to be adopted. These should include networking activities, hands on exercises, experiment laboratories, participatory learning role models and mentorship activities.
Teachers need to be included, ensuring that there is capacity building for teaching which includes the design on innovative teaching methods and materials.
Fostering a start-up culture
Open risk taking culture
Culture is a critical asset of an innovation culture. Governments can create an innovative country by a willingness to share information and lessons learned widely.
They can take a lead in sharing lessons from both success and failure of certain projects they would have undertaken. They should also be willing to accept constructive criticism and also give it where appropriate.
Highlight entrepreneurs
as role models
Successful entrepreneurs are symbolic for aspiring entrepreneurs. There is need to promote the local entrepreneur and make a story of telling the whole story not just their success, but also their failures and how they recovered.
Throughout the community all actors can play a part in really showing off entrepreneurs. Universities and student groups can create programmes that encourage students to market their business ideas. Companies can promote entrepreneurs within their organisations and entrepreneurs themselves can organise to promote entrepreneurs collectively .
Accept failure as part of the learning process
Other organisations have developed a work culture of bringing their mistakes to the table every week as a normal thing to do, making it more of learning than failing. A culture of innovation thrives on risk taking but it takes time to build a community of role models who can show that taking risks and sometimes failing pay off.
Other countries initiated a FailCon, a one day conference for entrepreneurs, investors, developers and designers to study their own and other failures, learn from these experiences and prepare for success. Establishing connections with other start-up communities can help foster this kind of culture.
Foster public-private communication
Communication between the public and private sector encourages a direct dialogue with the community, creates a positive feedback loop through which businesses can help government develop policy that supports innovation. Monthly breakfast and regular meetings with local authorities bring policy makers and business community together can lead to development of innovations.
Adaptability
This is a commitment to monitoring the internal environment through measurement and external environment through research and using the results to identify possibilities for change and improvement.
At an organisational level, the following questions can be asked; Are you monitoring customer feedback to define shifts in need and behaviour? Do you regularly seek feedback from external stakeholders about your performance? Do you question the status quo to ensure that it is still the best one?
Results and rewards
This is a dedication to tracking outcomes, impact but also rewarding the right behaviours. Do you push decisions downwards to those on the front line and with the right behaviour more than you reprimand negative behaviour? How does your organisation handle failure? Do you learn from it and share lessons learned?
Learning organisation
This is a promise to employees to support a learning organisation that will encourage them to grow and learn without fear. Do all employees have goals for personal development that are regularly discussed and nurtured?
When something goes wrong, does everyone pitch in without playing the blame game? Do you share best practices and news worthy trends with everyone for feedback and possible implementation with the organisation?
Culture design is one of the most important elements in the quest to develop a home grown start-up ecosystem. Once a culture is developed, it takes a life of its own. So the most important part is developing institutions which are focused on enabling Startups to develop and thrive.
◆ Nokuthula G Moyo-Muparuri is a lecturer at the Midlands State University in the Faculty of Business Sciences. She is also the founder of the Institute of Applied Entrepreneurship. The mission of the Institute is Business Skills Development and Start-up ecosystem Development. The Institute provides Bespoke or Custom Designed Courses tailor made to capacitate Business Skills required by organisations. In terms of Start-up ecosystem Development, the Institute engages the network participants to collaborate in developing a vibrant and dynamic Start-up ecosystem. The writer has also authored 3 books and co-authored two books in the area of Business Law. You can contact her on +263718747621.